by Amanda Foody
“You’re supposed to drink it when you’re feeling confident.” He laughed hollowly. “‘It’s flirting with losing just for the thrill of it,’ Reymond used to say.”
Then Levi downed his drink all at once. He coughed afterward and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
“Reymond’s dead,” he murmured.
“What?” Enne asked, certain she’d misheard.
“Sedric Torren had him killed today.”
The hair on her arms rose at the mention of Sedric’s name. After poisoning him, it had been easy to forget how powerful he truly was. Reymond Kitamura ran the largest street gang in the city, but Sedric Torren could still order his execution and never face justice. If Sedric ever realized the part she’d played in tricking him, she’d share the same fate as Reymond...or worse.
“Levi...I’m so sorry.” She’d come here for comfort, but she hadn’t even considered that Levi might need some, as well. And now that she knew, she saw the unmistakable shock in his eyes, in the rigid way he was carrying himself. She wanted to hug him, but she was awkwardly curled up on the other side of the couch. And crawling toward him, touching him—that all felt like dangerous ground. She was already on dangerous ground with Levi Glaisyer.
Instead, she reached out and took his hand. He jolted at her touch, but didn’t pull away.
“Yeah,” he murmured, setting his empty glass down. “I’m sorry, too.”
Enne waited another five seconds—counted them precisely in her head—and pulled her hand away. She felt warm all over.
He’s not like us, Reymond had said. He’s better than us.
Feeling even guiltier than before, she took several more sips of her drink. Reymond had warned Enne against leading Levi into trouble, and telling Levi her secret definitely counted as that. She still didn’t consider herself ruthless and cunning like the Scar Lord, but she was starting to see what he’d meant when he’d compared them. She’d held a knife to someone’s throat. She was the girl who’d poisoned the wolf. She’d lied to Levi from the moment they’d met.
Maybe New Reynes had already corrupted her.
But another, quieter part of her suspected otherwise. Enne should’ve felt ill walking into rehearsal today, knowing her talent descended from such a notorious bloodline. Instead, she felt exhilarated. In Bellamy, her aspirations had been confined to keeping up and fitting in with her classmates. Never had she been given the chance to excel. Never had she tasted ambition...desire.
For the first time in her life, Enne felt confident. All those years spent agonizing over her shortcomings, all those years attempting to be something she wasn’t. At what point in Enne’s life had she decided that others controlled what she wanted, that she couldn’t just reach out and take it?
Maybe the city hadn’t corrupted her at all. Maybe she’d always been this vicious, and the Scar Lord had simply been the first to see it.
“So,” Levi said, startling Enne out of her thoughts. “This is where you tell me exactly how you overpowered a fake Dove.” Even though Enne had come here expecting to tell him about last night, the strain in his voice told her he was trying to shift the subject away from his friend. She decided to let him...for now. “They teach you hand-to-hand combat at that finishing school of yours?”
“Yes, of course.” She grinned. “That’s a requirement nowadays to become a lady. I could fight you while balancing books on my head.”
“Look at that.” He pointed at his arm, and Enne—foolishly—leaned forward to look. He flicked her on the forehead. “I just trembled.”
She kicked him in the leg. “Rude.”
Then she left her leg there, stretched out, her foot touching him. She felt like every move she made around him was a dare to herself to see how far she would go. And she wasn’t sure if she was doing it simply for the thrill, from the drink...or because of something more.
But she wasn’t in this city to find romance with street lords; she was here to find her mother. New Reynes was so intertwined with Levi’s character that flirting with him would be like flirting with the City of Sin itself, and after all of this was over, Enne still very much intended to return home. Anything between them could only be a distraction. Besides, considering all those articles of clothing left behind in his wardrobe, Levi hardly had reason to find interest in her.
She slid her leg back.
“After Lola told me what she knew,” Enne continued, “she decided she’d kill me. She said that my existence was too dangerous for the city.” She paused, expecting Levi to deny this, but he only nodded for her to continue. “After that, she attacked me. She’s tall, but she’s not very fast. It wasn’t hard to take her knife.”
“Being the expert fighter that you are,” he joked.
“I’m stronger than I look. You try keeping up with dancing and acrobatics rehearsals all day.” She grabbed the box of cookies from the coffee table and tore it open. “If it wasn’t for my supposed Dondelair split talent, I’d essentially be pudding right now.”
“Yes. Pudding. I’m sure.”
She narrowed her eyes and shoved a cookie in her mouth. “Anyway, after that, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t just...leave. Lola was set on killing me, and if she told anyone about my talents, the whiteboots would kill me for her.” She pulled her gaze away from Levi, in case he noticed the darkness in her eyes from the things she’d done. “So she swore to me. Now she can’t tell anyone the truth.”
Levi leaned forward and took the box. He slid out several gingersnaps. “When you say swore...?”
“Blood by blood. Life by life. Something like that.”
He straightened, then slid closer to her. She really wished he would stop doing that. The smell of his aftershave was annoyingly tempting.
“A street oath?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a lord?”
“I guess so.”
“You’ve been in New Reynes four days, and you’re already building yourself a gang? Just what have you been reading in that guidebook of yours?”
She ripped the box out of his hands. “It was the only option. It’s not as if I ever need to see her again.”
“You might want to. Oaths aren’t unbreakable,” Levi warned. “There are all sorts of rules about challenging lords and loyalty. Telling your secret to a third party? That would be hard. Killing you?” He made a slicing motion across his throat. “Give the girl a gun, call it a duel and you’ll be dead.”
None of that seemed very logical to her.
“Well, what else should I do?” Enne had already made up her mind not to kill Lola. In the moment, she could’ve called it self-defense. But now, it felt cold-blooded. Enne wasn’t a villain.
“You should keep an eye on her. Keep your enemies close, and all that. And oaths get weaker when you don’t see each other.”
“And we’d do...what? Knit? Have tea?”
“I don’t know. She probably knows a lot about families and talents, being a blood gazer. Maybe she could help us learn more about these Dondelair and Scordata parents of yours. That could lead us back to Lourdes.”
Enne pursed her lips. Lourdes was a monarchist and a Mizer sympathizer, so maybe if they found a link between Enne’s birth parents and her mother, it would help them in their search. Enne loathed the thought of returning to the Deadman District and confronting the hate in Lola’s eyes, but this could be their only lead.
“You’re right,” she said, reaching for her drink. “We probably should ask Lola.” The whiskey and coffee liqueur burned their way down her throat.
“There’s something else,” Levi said, sliding closer again. Now Enne had her arms wrapped around her knees, and Levi was seated facing her, only inches from her feet. She curled in her toes and looked everywhere but at his face. “That card left in Lourdes’s hotel room wasn’t just a normal playing card.”
“What d
o you mean?”
“It’s called a Shadow Card.” He bit his lip. “During the Revolution and through the Great Street War, the Phoenix Club was famous for playing something called the Shadow Game. It’s a card game where the invited players are...killed.”
Her stomach clenched. This was it...this was when she learned that her mother was dead.
“The cards all symbolize different things. Only one card is used for the actual invitation: the Fool,” he explained. “That wasn’t the card in Lourdes’s hotel room, which meant the one we found was only a warning.”
“So either Lourdes is hiding from the Phoenix Club,” Enne said darkly, “or she’s already dead.”
“Yes. I suppose it’s been that way all along.” He placed a hand on her knee. “It isn’t as bad as it—”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday?” She shoved his hand off.
“It was dangerous to talk about it in the open. I was going to tell you when we got back to St. Morse, but then you wanted to be alone. And by alone, I mean, steal my best pistol and stroll over to Dove Land behind my back.”
Enne curled herself tighter into a ball. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to come to New Reynes and discover there’d been some terrible storm—maybe that no ships had been sailing for months. And Lourdes would just be here, waiting for her chance to come home.” She could picture Lourdes seated outside a café on the South Side, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. In Enne’s fantasy, Enne ordered herself a pastry and sat down beside her, and Lourdes told her all about the adventures she had in the City of Sin.
And then they went home.
“I wasn’t supposed to be a Mizer.” Enne took another sip of her drink. “How am I supposed to go back?”
After the things I’ve done, she added silently.
“Sometimes we’re not who we want to be because we’re supposed to be something else,” he said. She wondered if he even believed that himself.
Enne leaned against Levi’s shoulder, and he wrapped his arm around her. It was a dangerously easy move to make. She felt both comfortable and restless at the same time. Daring herself further, she pressed her cheek into his chest.
“I’m supposed to be dead,” she whispered.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Enne stared at Levi’s hand, palm facing up on his knee. It would be so easy to take it. But, certainly, she’d had enough thrill for one night. Any more touching and he would know what she was feeling, and she wouldn’t be able to take it back. If he knew, if he slid his arm further down her waist, or brushed his forehead against hers, then all she would be able to say was yes.
“I can’t even make volts. My talent isn’t ‘triggered’ yet, or whatever Lola said.” She was rambling. She crossed her arms, keeping her hand a good distance away from his. “That strikes me as very unfair. Think of how rich we’d be.”
Enne bit her lip. She definitely shouldn’t have said “we.”
“That would...solve a lot of problems,” he said slowly. “But then your eyes would turn purple, and it’d be very hard to protect you, then.”
“And you would, wouldn’t you?” she breathed. These words, too, were a dare. “Protect me?”
Silence. When she looked up at him, her cheek still pressed against his shoulder, he was watching her carefully. He swallowed. “Yes.”
Enne had never truly had a friend. Lourdes was the only one who’d ever listened and advised and cared. And so she was surprised by this truth—that she had become unlikely friends with a street lord. Maybe even more than friends. When she looked at him, she saw someone invested in her search to find her mother, someone who understood the helplessness of Vianca’s stare. She suddenly realized that, if he was the one in distress, then she would rush to save him, too.
“You’re going to laugh when you hear this,” Enne started.
“I usually do—”
“When I left rehearsal today, every single person knew my name.” She fiddled with her shirt. Even after telling him the truth of her talents, this confession somehow felt more personal. Maybe because she knew it sounded absurd, even before she explained it. But still, she wanted to share it, and she knew that he would listen. “I’ve gone to school with girls my entire life who forget my existence regularly. I could walk beneath a spotlight and be mistaken for a shadow.”
“Your schoolmates were snobbish,” he said.
She shook her head. She knew it would be difficult to put into words. “It’s more than that. I stand at the back of the stage for every show. I’m marked absent when I’m the first to arrive. I introduce myself again and again, only to be forgotten.” Her breath hitched for a moment, and she quickly swallowed down her flood of emotions. She felt like she was carving herself open and laying it bare. The worst hurt in the world was the kind you grew to accept. “That’s the reason I began to doubt. Not because of Lourdes’s lies or how easily I’ve picked up acrobatics. But because I have never impressed anyone—not ever. But since I arrived in New Reynes, people have seen me.”
“You impress me every time I’m with you.” Levi said it so simply, as if he’d repeat those words forever without doubting them, as if those words were cheap. To Enne, they were worth everything.
Enne finished the rest of her Gambler’s Ruin. As she set down the glass, her fingers trembled. All of her conflicted emotions had left her heart as sore as her body. She could lie back down on Levi’s chest and sleep until morning.
“It’s getting late,” Levi said softly.
Enne tensed and sat up. “Oh, yes.” She hurriedly straightened out her hair. “I should go.”
“You don’t... Yes. You should.” He stood up awkwardly and picked up the glasses and the now-empty box of cookies. “You ate all of these.” He tossed the box back on the table.
“You had some.”
“Yeah. Maybe two.”
“You said they were just for me.” She stuck out her tongue.
He laughed. “I’ll have to steal more for you tomorrow from the breakfast room.”
She liked the idea of him keeping cookies here for her. It gave her more of a reason to come back.
Her guidebook had been wrong about one thing: the most dangerous part of the City of Sin wasn’t the beckoning of the card tables or the threat of the gangs. It was the allure of Levi Glaisyer’s roguish smile.
She stood up. He was in her way to the door. Standing so close, smelling like he did, looking at her like that...he was quite the obstacle.
Levi reached into the pocket of a jacket on the rack beside him. He pulled out a key, grinned sheepishly and handed it to her. “It’s a spare, to my apartment. Feel free to steal my guns anytime you want, but I’d prefer if you ask me first.”
She took the key. Like the weapons he’d offered her, it felt like a dangerous thing.
“Will you be all right?” she asked. She swallowed. She definitely shouldn’t invite herself to stay longer, not when he’d already suggested she leave. It was tactless. It was...dangerous. He was her only companion in New Reynes, and she was mistaking his help for something else. “I know you and Reymond were close.” It wasn’t fair he’d given her comfort when she hadn’t returned it. “If you need to talk more—”
“I don’t want to,” he said quickly. “I mean, not tonight. But you don’t have to—”
“Stay, I know. We can meet up again tomorrow. Six o’clock? Right after my rehearsal?”
They locked eyes, making Enne’s breath hitch. His free hand reached for hers, then dropped. “I was going to say...never mind. Yes, six o’clock is fine.”
Enne hesitated. The intensity in Levi’s gaze made her shiver. When he looked at her, he saw her. She wanted to disappear into the sanctuary of a shadow. She wanted to remain here forever just to feel his stare. But if she lingered any longer, he would guess at her
thoughts. She’d already surrendered so much of herself to the City of Sin, and a kiss from Levi Glaisyer would seal the deal. Her thoughts betrayed her too easily.
She took a step back. “Good night,” she said breathlessly.
He licked his lips and pulled away. His poker face, as always, revealed nothing. “Good night.”
DAY FIVE
“The South Side may seem safer, reader, but remember—some monsters wait until your guard is down to bare their teeth.”
—The City of Sin, a Guidebook: Where To Go and Where Not To
ENNE
Now in possession of a key, Enne let herself into Levi’s apartment. It was ten minutes early than their planned meeting time, but Enne had come anyway, anxious from sitting around her apartment after rehearsal with nothing to do but fiddle with her token.
She heard a shower running. She leaned against the bathroom door, feeling both embarrassed and bold. “I was thinking about what you said about oaths,” she said, hoping she was loud enough for him to hear. “And I have questions. I read the rest of my guidebook, and I can’t find anything about them or why they work.”
The water turned off, but Levi didn’t answer.
“How often do I need to see Lola to make the oath last? Can she tell someone that she’s sworn an oath to me, even if she doesn’t say anything about what I am? Should I be worried—”
The door swung open, and Enne nearly fell backward.
“What oath?” a male voice asked.
She turned around and gaped. Jac was standing in the bathroom, wearing nothing but a silver Creed necklace and a towel wrapped around his hips. His blond hair dripped down his neck and chest, and Enne saw that his sleeves of black tattoos continued up his shoulders, laced down his stomach, and even grazed his hip bones. On the underside of his elbows, there were several sets of scars—bumpy, but long faded.
Enne flushed multiple shades of scarlet and quickly averted her eyes, backing away from the door.
“I heard everything,” he said flatly. He held his hands up, as if Enne was a small animal he might scare off. “I don’t really know you, but whatever is going on, I want to help. Levi could use it right now.”